the smart girl's guide to polyamory

No one likes a know-it-all, but everyone loves a girl with brains and heart. The Smart Girl's Guide to Polyamory is an intelligent and comprehensive guide to polyamory, open relationships, and other forms of alternative love, offering relationship advice radically different from anything you'll find on the magazine rack.

This practical guidebook will help women break free of the mold of traditional monogamy, without the constraints of jealousy, possessiveness, insecurity, and competition. The Smart Girl's Guide to Polyamory incorporates interviews and real-world advice from women of all ages in nontraditional relationships, as well as exercises for building self-awareness, confidence in communication, and strategies for managing and eliminating jealousy. If you're curious about exploring group sex, opening up your current monogamous relationship, or ready to “come out” as polyamorous, this book covers it all!

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“‘Smart’ is definitely the right word for this thoughtful, well-researched, and practical guide to the female side of polyamory.” —Janet W. Hardy, coauthor, The Ethical Slut

"More than just a 'glimpse into a world outside the status quo,' Dedeker Winston’s new book The Smart Girl’s Guide to Polyamory guides readers on a sassy romp through introducing and defining polyamory, to finding out what others have said about it, and ending up outside the classroom, the closet, and the norm. Witty and substantial at the same time, this is the perfect book for anyone seeking an informative and entertaining 'alternative education on love.'" —Elisabeth Sheff, author of The Polyamorists Next Door, Stories from the Polycule, and When Someone you Love is Polyamorous

"Behind the modern polyamory movement is a deeper concept: relationship choice. Dedeker Winston explains, with wit and insight, how you can shed society's off-the-shelf, one-size-fits-all relationship model and successfully design your own. You and your partner, or partners, can build your intimate lives together in new ways that work best for all of you— ethically, honestly, and with mutual care and understanding. . . .

"Women are leading this movement, and Winston is one of the smartest. As she tells from experience, it won't be easy. Designer relationships require extraordinary communication, self-insight, and good hearts all around. And a fearless embrace of agency and autonomy, in both yourself and others. The poly community's collective wisdom—hard-earned through sometimes bitter experience -- will be a huge aid in avoiding known pitfalls and not re-inventing wheels. Whether you end up choosing 'conscious monogamy' or one of the many types of ethical nonmonogamy, this book will point you right." —Alan MacRobert, Polyamory in the News

“Written with women in mind, Winston’s book is a colorfully written manual for anyone who’s curious about what polyamory does and doesn’t mean, or who’s realizing that traditional relationships may not be for them." ―Inverse